International trade deals weaken national governments and strengthen corporations. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the other agreements policed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) strictly limit the ability of national, regional and local governments to direct economic activity for the benefit of their citizens, or to stop corporations from exploiting labour or harming the environment.
For example, chapter 11 of the NAFTA gives foreign investors the right to sue governments for lost potential profits when a government acts to protect its citizens. Canadian taxpayers have already made multi-million dollar pay-offs to foreign corporations for our government’s audacity in seeking to protect the Canadian public from environmental threats. Programs that have supported the development of the Canadian auto and aerospace industries have been struck down by secret international trade panels.
A big part of the corporate globalization program – deregulation, worker insecurity and inequality, tax breaks for corporations, degrading and privatizing public services – is ensuring that governments interfere as little as possible with corporate power, except to provide a disciplined and compliant workforce.
Corporations have used international trade deals to lock in their program - to ensure that even relatively-progressive governments that do not fully subscribe to their agenda will have a very hard time resisting.
So the question arises: If globalization and the trade deals are designed to tie the hands of every government, no matter who’s in charge, does it really matter who we elect? Is it futile to resist the corporate juggernaut? That’s an important question for Canadians in the middle of a federal election campaign.
Well, corporate bosses have no doubts about how important our governments are. Corporations are stronger around the world today because they decided back in the mid-1970’s that they didn’t like the way things were going – workers were earning more, unions were getting stronger, social protections like unemployment insurance and public pensions were making workers more secure (and freer to challenge their bosses).
So the corporate bosses got together (in groups like the Business Council on National Issues in Canada and the Business Roundtable in the U.S.) and spent a lot of money to ensure that governments got elected that would follow their instructions – both domestically and in the every-expanding trade deals. The corporations were successful, and we are living with the results – stronger (and wealthier) corporate bosses, weaker, poorer and more insecure workers.
Workers have little direct say in how corporations operate. Just about the only way that workers in democracies can try to affect corporate activities is by electing governments that will work for workers.
The trade deals and corporate blackmail make it harder, but if we elect governments that are willing to challenge them, to take off the corporate handcuffs, it is possible to expand workers’ rights, to rebuild public services and social security, to develop active industrial policies that will create good, secure jobs.
But it takes politicians who are willing to challenge the corporate agenda. The expanded global power of corporations makes the governments we elect more important than ever. Voting for governments that will fight for workers is about the most important thing we can do to resist corporate power.
